The Wild Rover_ A Blistering Journey Along Britain_s Footpaths - Mike Parker [122]
Another company offered a product I hadn’t even realised existed: electronic pedestrian counters. These – somewhat inevitably, if for no apparent reason, called ‘eco counters’ – can be placed in special bollards in order to monitor every person walking past, thanks to a ‘pyroelectric lens sensitive to the infrared emitted by the human body’. Or pressure-sensitive pads can be buried in slabs or steps, and the information beamed anywhere via satellite, Bluetooth or GPRS modem. All part of the obsession with monitoring and counting that seems to infect every public agency, as if that in itself were the definition of democracy. You’ll see it if you ever look at the website of a government department or local council: it’s nigh-on inevitable that within seconds of landing on the home page, you’ll be asked to fill in a feedback form about it. Someone, somewhere is being paid to collect these mountains of information. Just how useful is it, on a scale of 1 (pointless) to 5 (essential)? Can I give it ½?
The paths on which you’re likely to be counted, assessed and monitored are not generally the ones that excite your average rambler. They’re often the civic showpiece routes, smooth tarmac or gravel, copious interpretation boards and signs, picnic table stops and designated viewpoints, all opened in a fanfare of photo-opportunity for the mayor, local MP and someone in a polo shirt and trackie bottoms from the health authority. They’re paths that look like a road, so as not to scare folk addicted to their cars.
That said, the National Trails love their people counters too, and have been using them for decades. The Countryside Commission produced a report on use of the Pennine Way in 1971, whose statistics depended much on ‘a photoflux counter’ and a mechanically switched totaliser placed on a gate, both at Edale. Technology was basic: the report admits that when the figures from the photoflux device were compared with ‘visual counts’ over a specific timed period, the electronic device had a counting efficiency of only 60 per cent. Nowadays, technology is hugely sophisticated, but the results might not be much more helpful. ‘The pressure pads count sheep, dogs, cows and sometimes absolutely nothing, perhaps just a heavy downfall,’ one warden told me. ‘They’re really not very useful, in my opinion, but the bosses love them.’
At the IPROW conference, I heard many people express the idea that, with local authority funding drying up, they needed to tap more from health budgets, and this has been a growing tendency over the last decade. I well recall the first time the trend made itself known to me, walking my dog around Edgbaston Reservoir in Birmingham early in the 2000s. It’s a route I’d often done before, but this time new signs had erupted every couple of hundred yards along the path that hugs the water’s edge. Each one had a logo of a big, happy heart and told you how far you had walked from the car park, and how far you still had to go if you were going to do the full circuit. Each one also stated something along the lines of : ‘You are on a Walk. Walking is Good For You. It helps promote a Healthy Heart. Keep Going! Enjoy walking to a Healthier You!’ By the time I’d read this drivel for the tenth time, my blood pressure was soaring.
In fact, paths should be one of the most generously funded arms of local government, so neatly do they fulfil the obsessions and orthodoxies of the moment. Having a walk is good for your health, both physical and mental. It is the ultimate in green and sustainable transport. It gets you out of your little fortress and into a realm where you might bump into a stranger, have quite a pleasant chat and they might not actually try to kill or mug you; it is therefore fabulous for combating loneliness, over-exposure to the Daily Mail and for helping foster community cohesion.